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25 essential games to have in your iOS collection
The 12 Best Games for Mac. You may also like. You can almost hear the battle cries and smell the gunpowder in what is arguably Creative Assembly’s finest strategy game, which gives players. Feb 28, 2020 When it comes to turn-based strategy games, you can't do better than Sid Meier's series of Civilization titles. In this fifth edition, you begin with 20 historical leaders, and your job is to slowly take over the world from the dawn of man into the space age.
Updated February 03, 2020: Post entry tweaks
Most people would probably associate the strategy game genre with the PC. They might well conclude that the sheer complexity of these hardcore games requires a mouse, keyboard, and monitor set-up.
But that's a load of outdated piffle. Strategy games can be as intuitive, streamlined, and accessible to a mainstream audience as they please. Just look at a list of the most popular mobile games of the past decade (by any metric) for confirmation of that fact. The iPhone and iPad stores are rife with great strategy games.
The likes of Clash of Clans, Mobile Strike, Summoners War, Boom Beach and Game of War: Fire Age have all raked in more than $1 billion in their lifetimes.
This doesn't mean that mobile strategy games need necessarily be flimsy, shallow or overtly casual affairs though. It's possible to wring real depth out of a modern touchscreen device.
The following list of mobile strategy games covers the entire gamut, from casual city builders to hardcore turn-based tactics. That's the beauty of the mobile strategy game scene - its sheer variety.
We haven't even included tower defence in our deliberations, as that's a thriving sub-genre that deserves (and indeed has received) its own separate list.
Here, then, is a list of our favourite mobile strategy games for iPhone and iPad. We're quite aware that there are loads of stone-cold classics and popular favourites that we've left off. We only had 25 slots to fill, after all, and we always try to reflect what's current.
If there's a mobile strategy game you think should be on this list, let us know in the comments section below.
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
It's Civilization VI on your iPad. Like, the actual Civilization VI, not some streamlined approximation. It's nothing less than one of the best and deepest strategy games on any platform.
XCOM: Enemy Within
XCOM has a reputation for being one of the finest squad-based strategy games around, with tense turn-based battles rendered in glorious 3D. This iOS conversion brings it to mobile without compromise.
FTL: Faster Than Light
FTL tasks you with running your very own spaceship, allocating resources to the departments that need it most. But the real thrill is that you have to do this while fleeing through a hostile star system.
Iron Marines
The maker of the peerless Kingdom Rush series proves that it can do classic RTS as well as its does tower defence. Iron Marines is brilliantly balanced, great to look at, and generally quite special.
Bad North
Bad North is a uniquely brilliant mish-mash of RTS, tower defence and roguelike elements as you defend your island communities from Viking attack.
SteamWorld Heist
SteamWorld Heist demonstrates that strategy games can be a zoomed-in, action-packed and even funny. This brilliant 2D squad-based game as you taking on robotic pirates with expertly placed ricochet shots.
Invisible, Inc.
Klei combines turn-based strategy with high-tech stealth in this beautiful isometric cyber-punk adventure.
ROME: Total War
One of the greatest and deepest real time strategy games ever made makes its way onto iPad, and it works shockingly well. ROME: Total War is the real deal.
Warbits
It doesn't look like we'll ever get Advance Wars on mobile, but Warbits is as close as it gets. This is colourful, intuitive turn-based strategy with a surprising amount of tactical depth.
Dungeon Warfare 2
You could well make the argument that Dungeon Warfare 2 is a tower defence game. But constructing the ultimate death-filled dungeon here proves to be so much more strategic and nuanced than your average lane runner.
Chaos Reborn: Adventures
A dauntingly deep and involving strategy game that punishes mistakes and rewards smart thinking. Its hex-based 3D battles have an impressive amount of tactical scope.
Tropico
Easily the best city builder on the market, Tropico is a richly detailed, responsive, engaging, and fun PC port that feels perfectly at home on iPad. It looks and sounds beautiful, too.
Tharsis
Strategy games don't need to be ponderous and small scale. First Strike concerns a global nuclear conflict, and each battle can be swept through in frighteningly quick time.
Pocket City
Though it's less viscerally impressive than Tropico, Pocket City remains an absolute treat of a premium city builder. In particular, it manages to combine intuitiveness with strategic depth better than most.
Sid Meier's Starships
Sci-fi strategy on a grand scale, Sid Meier's Starships has got interplanetary diplomacy, deep space exploration, and plenty of pew pew laser battles.
Clash of Clans
Oooh, controversial pick. But there's no denying that Clash has done something super interesting with the strategy genre, making it truly social and accessible, and making defence as important as all-out attack.
Crush Your Enemies
Pocket real time strategy in its purest form, Crush Your Enemies whittles things down to a series of feisty minutes-long battles. It's just not a sharply-made RTS, but a funny game filled with foul-mouthed, half-drunk barbarians.
Hero Academy 2
Hero Academy 2 starts slow, but blossoms into a brilliantly tactical turn-based experience. It's also an extremely polished, layered affair.
Plague Inc.
We're all used to defending life in our strategy games - Plague Inc. tasks you with destroying as much of it as possible by spreading and mutating a horrible virus. It's dark, man.
Frozen Synapse
Some strategy games simulate the big, the epic, the expansive. Frozen Synapse goes in tight, letting you plan the individual seconds of a frantic gunfight between computer simulated warriors.
Egypt: Old Kingdom
Star Trek: Fleet Command is a slick 4X mobile strategy game with sympathetic monetisation and a flexible mission-based progression system. It uses its license well too.
Battleplans
Battleplans is a thoroughly modern mobile strategy game hybrid, blending RTS, MOBA and base defence elements into a gloriously colourful whole.
Wild Beyond
What initially appears to be another Clash Royale clone soon reveals itself to be a lot deeper. It's got an engrossing single player campaign, and there's a real flow to its steadily branching battles.
The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands
An engaging and intuitive strategy game that offers genuine consequences for your decisions as you strive to keep your village alive and thriving. It's also beautiful, in its own sparse way.
Xenowerk Tactics
A brilliant turn-based strategy game set within Pixelbite's tense sci-fi Xenowerk universe. There's more than a hint of XCOM to its tight squad manoeuvring, but with a slightly more arcadey edge.
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Space. The final frontier. Mankind's inspiration from the antediluvian age, and similarly so with computer games. Some of the strategy medium's heaviest hitters are set in hard vacuum, which is why we're listing off some of gaming's greatest contemporary space games.
Space Strategy Game Mac
Allow us to present out best-in-class guide to space strategy games. We stretch as far back as 2005 in this list, but for the most part, these are modern titles that'll scratch that space itch in spectacular fashion.
What are the best Space Strategy Games?
- Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
- Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
- Homeworld Remastered Collection
- X3: Terran Conflict
- FTL: Faster Than Light
- Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
- Out There
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
Developer/Publisher: Black Lab Games/Slitherine
Purchase:Direct, Steam, PS4
We cannot say enough good things about Black Lab Games' Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock. Outside of being just a darn good use of the license -- sharing top billing alongside the boardgame -- one of Deadlock's biggest triumphs is sidestepping space itself. This is a game that can be incredibly intimate, with fleets manoeuvring in wolf packs, closing distance to chew out the sides of enemy vessels and hack or nuke their way to victory.
Unlike a lot of strategy game in hard vacuum, relative verticality and the y axis are key to successful engagement. Speed, heading and the height dovetail into a ship's firing vectors, making this no mere boring old circular broadside affair. Players need to minimize their damage intake as much as their damage output, which leads to a highly engaging ballet of ranging and ordnance. Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, whether it be the sprawling campaign, skirmish or online multiplayer, is not just a game for Battlestar fans, but any turn-based aficionado.
Deadlock has kicked off its second 'Season' of DLC content starting with the excellentResurrection expansion. The first season involved the equally excellent DLCs The Broken Alliance,Anabasisand Sin & Sacrifice.
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
Publisher/Developer: Focus Home Interactive/Tindalos
Purchase: Steam
Even though our own review was a bit luke-warm in places, overall BFG Armada 2 seems to been a modest success as far as continuing the legacy of Tindalos' original 40K space strategy epic. A slightly clunky UI and some sub-par mission design don't detract from the visually stunning, action-packed experience that Armada 2 represents. It's got all of the factions from the original table-top game, it's got plenty of customisation options, and plenty of game-modes to sink your teeth into (literally, if you fancy trying out the Tyranids).
Featuring fully-developed Imperium, Necron & Tyranid storylines, it's the main campaigns that are the start of the show. Skirmish is fun, as is multiplayer, but the way Armada 2 takes the recent 8th Edition lore changes and fully immerses you in the battles for the Eye of Terror is second-to-none. The real thing that will allow this game to cement its place amongst the great space-strategy games is the amount of post-launch support it'll get, which we hope is 'lots'. Since launch, it's received a massive update and DLC that adds in a new campaign for the Chaos faction - well worth checking out!
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Publisher/Developer: Stardock/Ironclad Games
Buy From: Direct
One of the older titles on this list, Sins of a Solar Empire actually launched in 2008. Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the standalone expansion, was released in 2012. But these games have had such a profound impact on the strategy space that it’s unthinkable not to address them here. Sins of a Solar Empire possess an endurance that parallels the continued popularity of franchises like Supreme Commander, or Command & Conquer Generals, and is a title where perennial requests for a new version have reached a fevered pitch.
Sins is perhaps the definitive title which perfectly captures the blend of 4X and RTS: empire management, tactical fleet battles, research, diplomacy, and did I mention the fleet battles? It’s an intoxicating formula that manages to turn what could have been viewed as a stripped-down experience (technically there’s no campaign, only skirmish matches) into a cult phenomenon. A bevy of high-class game mods have also cropped up around it: from Star Wars and Star Trek, to Battlestar Galactica and even Halo (The Sins of the Prophet mod is amazing–ED), SOASE is the very definition of a modern and enduring classic.
If you're in need of more proof, Stardock recently released a brand new piece of DLC for the game - Minor Factions. The fact that they're willing to support this game six years after its initial release shows that there's something very special here.
Homeworld Remastered Collection
Publisher/Developer: Gearbox Publishing w/ Aspyr
Purchase: Steam
Prodigal pretences aside, it was a grand day when Gearbox saw to the remastering of two giants of the real-time strategy genre. Relic Entertainment's original masterpiece might have been released nearly twenty years ago, but Homeworld hasn't aged a day. Gearbox tightened the screws, applied a tasteful array of textures and let the awe-inspiring tale of a galactic voyage home tell its story once more. Even now, Homeworld remains effortless to play. Its ruminative pace and wistful production values convey a sense of space and time that hasn't been matched since, and narrative presentation that does so very much with relatively little.
Homeworld 2's inclusion is the cherry on top, and while I still think the original title's story is the stronger of the two, the sequel ramps up the nitty-gritty of fleet production and composition. Gearbox again treated this 2003 game with care, providing the necessary technical updates while letting its classic gameplay speak for itself. Gameplay aside, Homeworld Remastered is a tasteful, powerful example of the strategy genre firing on all artistic cylinders. Time-tested gameplay, timeless art.
X3: Terran Conflict
Space Strategy Games Mac Steam
Publisher/Developer: Egosoft
Purchase: Steam
X3?!, you cray, but that's more like a Space RPG! Indeed, we're stretching the definition a bit here on this one, but as the grizzled deep-space entrepreneurs of Egosoft's long-running series know, there's a deliciously satisfying business sim nestled deep within the network of sensor arrays, software modules and ship systems. X3, and in particular, the Terran Conflict expansion, is ostensibly Eve Offline. A rags-to-riches sandbox of buying low, selling high, building and marketing, controlling and dominating. It can be a daunting experience for a first-timer, but X3 is a game that rewards patience and offers a suitably relaxing pace that lets a player acclimatize at their leisure.
If you approach X3 as a proxy for TIE Fighter or Descent Freespace, you'll more than likely be disappointed. But if the idea of running a mercantile empire in space, building networks of manufacturing hubs in a dynamic market appeals, there's really no other option. A little unconventional in its digital bonsai approach of cramming spreadsheets into sensor tickers and station reports, X3 simulates a living, breathing world in the same way STALKER did for the FPS genre. The world will unfold around you, and care little for your presence unless waves are made. A unique and invigorating strategy game hidden within a cockpit.
FTL: Faster Than Light
Publisher/Developer: Subset Games
Purchase: Steam, iPad
The game that needs no introduction. Bigger than Ben Hur, an indie darling success story and perennial after-action report generator, Faster Than Light is the tactical, turn-on-a-dime ship management sim that made roguelikes very fashionable when it released in 2012. Subset Games went on to craft the equally excellentInto the Breach, but their debut title remains a shining light in simple, effective design.
FTL's brilliance belongs to its minute-to-minute gameplay, with the flow-on effect of every choice -- however subtle or seemingly insignificant -- being the beat of a butterfly's wings. With an encroaching rebel threat adding to the heaped tension of a game with no do-overs, simple bifurcations weigh heavy. Answer that distress call? Hire this crew member? Upgrade that module in favour of this one? And when combat comes calling, the right person at the right place is often a very hard call to make. Thrilling and infuriating in just the right measurements.
FTL is deserving of its accolades, and if you've not already got it checked off in the inventory, get thee to wherever you can find it. A tactical roguelike RPG that asks the hardest question: What do we do now, Captain?
Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
Publisher/Developer: Digital Eel
Purchase: Steam
You might not have heard of Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space. That's okay. I'd sure like to be in your position again, a cleansed palate ready to taste the weirdness for the first time. Weird Worlds might seem to have been bested by the aforementioned FTL at first glance, but for my money, they work wonderfully in concert. Weird Worlds doesn't start with its foot on a player's neck, and while the game lives up to its 'space opera in thirty minutes' claim via uninvited brutality, there's a quirky pulp levity to Digital Eel’s galactic roamer.
Players start on their flagship with the barest of directives, leap-frogging as far as their fuel reserves and initiative will take them. Inventories balloon, friendly crew met, foes found. From nodal traversal to the short and sweet combat, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space has a whimsical air that frees the player from agonizing over the next mission. If it doesn't work out this time around, there's always the next. The original Strange Tales is available for free over on Shrapnel Games and the sequel dropped in 2015. However, 2005's Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is the formula at its cleanest and most joyous. A game that lets players explore an odd galaxy before the coffee cools.
Out There
Publisher/Developer: Mi-Clos Studios
Purchase:Steam, iOS, Android
Mi-Clos Studios' Out There is the outlier in this list, given that it is largely driven by its rich writing. But calling this game merely interactive fiction would be a gross disservice to a tough, rewarding resource manager nested in a highly replayable space adventure. It bridges the celestial journey of Homeworld with the heavy choices of FTL and Weird World's adventuring, creating a unique experience you might have missed when it initially dropped.
Presented with pulp comic visuals and a dreamlike ambient score, players must navigate their way home while seeking out crucial supplies and items. Out There's innumerable random events, initially-indecipherable alien languages and galactic layout mean you'll only experience a fraction of the game's entire mission payload, spread between three endings. Systems have multiple planets to explore if the budget can stretch, aliens to interact with, resources to harvest and events to surmount.
This is also the only game on the list that doesn't feature any combat. In keeping with its golden age of science-fiction wistfulness, Out There is a roguelike strategy with higher aspirations. No hostiles in this hostile universe. Just a ship, finite cargo and you. Good luck, plan well, learn the language.
Other Top Space Strategy Game Reccomendations
Agree or disagree? We'd love to read your favourites and ideas below.